Helter Skelter
by Rosaliebyrd13
Summary: Bella knows more about the world of weird than she'd ever care to admit. She's been dealing with supernatural mojo since she was small. What she wasn't prepared for? A supposedly dead former flame showing up on her doorstep at two in the morning. R&R plz
1. Chapter 1

**AN: So Hiya! This is my fist fanfic so I hope you all like. Just a few starter outers, so that you aren't all confused: This is before all of the twilight books and just after Dean becomes hell hound chow in Supernatural. Now I don't know the Supernatural series really really well (I know the plot line but I don't know exact episodes and all that) so don't bite my head off if I mess up anything! Just review and let me know so that I can fix it! So without further ado… heregoes!**

We didn't burn his body, and even though I knew it was wrong, secretly I was glad. I think I would've lost whatever shred of sanity I had left if I had to watch Dean's body burn.

"He'll need a body later, when he comes back," Sam just kept insisting. Bobby alternated between shouting and quiet logic, trying to force him to see reason, but Sam would have none of it. I sat silently through all the arguments, barley aware of my surroundings. Somewhere along the line, lord only knows how, I had acquired a bottle of strong tequila and slowly but surely I was working my way through the complete numbness I felt. The men didn't question me, they just let me be. I don't think either of them felt capable of dealing with female emotions at the moment. Then around dawn Bobby shook me from my stupor. I didn't need to ask any questions, I knew what was coming. So I followed him out to the yard.

Sam drove the Impala, Dean's car, his pride and joy, and I followed behind in my sleek '67 Shelby Mustang, Eleanor. Bobby led our funeral procession in an old Ford pickup. We ended up at an empty field not too far away from Bobby's property, hidden from the road by a smattering of trees and shrubbery. Bobby and I watched without speaking as Sam beat away at the stubborn earth with a rusty shovel. He wouldn't let me help him dig the grave, and so I sat in the damp grass clutching my ever faithful friend, the tequila bottle, and feeling absolutely nothing.

Bobby finally agreed to bury Dean's corpse instead of giving him the old salt n' burn, probably only because Sam looked so close to the brink of destruction, and so together we lowered a pine box into the deep hole where Dean would lay for eternity. I knocked back another hard swig of alcohol before pouring what little was left in the bottle over Dean's coffin. _No. Not coffin. Box. Rich people with thousands of dollars to burn got fancy polished coffins with silk linings and feather pillows. People like us got knotted pine boxes,_ I thought bitterly. I wasn't drunk, even though I'd finished almost an entire bottle of tequila in a single night. No, I wasn't drunk, but I couldn't feel a thing, hadn't been able to feel a thing ever since… ever since I had crawled over to Dean's lifeless body and cradled his limp head in my hands. Fine by me. It was feelings, after all, that got me into this mess. I picked up the shovel and slowly began to fill in Dean's grave.

I worked in silence and the other two didn't talk either. What could possibly be said at a time like this? Families normally hired preachers to talk at funerals because really, who else would want to talk? We didn't have a preacher though. We just had ourselves, and none of us were very good with expressing our feelings. My empty bottle was buried somewhere in the grave, I didn't pay attention when it fell in, just kept piling dirt on top, until finally I was patting down soil even with the surrounding grass.

It was finished, the burring of the man I loved, and I still couldn't feel a goddamned thing.

Bobby hammered a wooden cross into the ground at the head of the grave, like the kind you see along the sides of highways where unfortunate automotive accidents happened. Still I felt nothing.

We were all silent for a moment longer then – "Son of a Bitch!" I threw down my shovel. Tears stung my eyes and a lump the size of an onion rose in my throat. I crouched down in the guise of retrieving the shovel, trying to hide my tears, only to end up clutching my knees as sobs wracked my body. I felt strong arms encircle me, but they weren't the arms I so desperately craved. It felt like someone had ripped my heart out of my chest and left me alone to deal with the jagged hole.

I leaned into Sam's strong embrace and cried and he let me, never letting go. We stayed like that for what felt like an eternity before I finally quieted and he helped me to my feet. Together we walked to Bobby's truck. He gave us a quick once-over before a sharp nod. "Alright there you two?"

"Yeah, thanks Bobby," Sam replied. I simply jerked my head; I didn't quite trust my voice. We drove back to Bobby's place in the same sad line that had brought us to the field. Once there the guys slowly walked up the porch steps and through the front door. I leaned against my car, staring at the old house. Somehow it didn't feel right for me to go in, like I didn't belong anymore. I felt like I didn't have any ties here, like nothing was holding me. I knew that was untrue, knew that Sam and Bobby were more like family to me than my own parent, but somehow I was lost.

After my graveside breakdown I realized that I wouldn't survive long if I couldn't hold myself together, and this place, this life, was just a pointy stick poking and prodding at my wound. I couldn't stay, it wouldn't be fair to Sam and Bobby for me to sit around the house and mope. And it wouldn't be fair to me to constantly live in pain and on edge. Bobby and Sam would watch me, waiting for the next emotional volcano, and I couldn't live like that. _I deserved to move on, goddamnit!_ I tried to convince myself. _I deserved to be at least partially functional._

"Bella?" Sam was on the front porch, watching me, making sure I wasn't going to cry or punch him or something I guess. He must have decided I looked fairly stable because he came to stand in front of me. His hand moved as if to comfort me and I flinched. He looked hurt by my reaction and suddenly I felt so guilty. I knew it was wrong, it wasn't really Sam's fault, it was Dean after all who made that stupid deal with the crossroads demon, but some small and very mean part of me blamed Sam at least a little bit for Dean's death. Part of me blamed Jake, the kid that had killed Sam in the first place. A whole lot of me blamed the Yellow Eyed Demon. Hell, sometimes I even blamed myself. Sam sighed. "You're not staying are you?"

I offered an apologetic smile, he knew me too well. ""I can't," my voice was thick with the tears I was fighting to keep down. He frowned at the ground and I knew he was blaming himself. "Sam," It hurt to say his name, but I did. I caught his chin and forced him to look at me. "Sam this has nothing to do with you. I don't blame you… or at least I know I shouldn't. Sam, you're my family. I just can't stay." I released his face and crossed my arms, holding myself together. "There are things I need to sort out, and as much as I love you, I need to be on my own." Tears were falling freely now, from both of us and I wiped and my eyes trying to stop them.

"Okay," Sam sounded choked up. Out of all of us, Sam was the best at expressing feelings, which was why I was so surprised at his simple answer now. "But Bella, please, please call if you need to talk. I don't want to lose you too." I hugged him tight then for what would probably be the last time in a long time, burying my face in his jacket, inhaling the scent that was so different from Dean's.

"You will never lose me, Sam." I whispered fiercely. I then hugged Bobby who had come out to join us on the drive way.

"I won't ask you to call when you get wherever you're going," He grumbled, "because I know you won't. But don't forget us, eh Bells?" his voice was tough, which coming from Bobby was the equivalent of an 'I love you.' I hugged him tighter.

"I won't be gone long enough for you to miss me" I mumbled into his jacket, but we both knew it was a lie. Everything here reminded me too much of Dean, too much of the time we spent together, and we both knew that I had every intention of speeding off in my car and not looking back for a good long while.

It wasn't until long after I had pulled out of the drive way and had been on the highway for a while that I realized I had absolutely no idea where I was headed.

**AN: Yay! Chapter One complete! Sorry, I'll try not to post too many ANs, but this is my first fanfic, so bear with me! So read and review! Please! **


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Thanks for all the reviews guys! I really appreciated them! For all who wanted to know, Bella is the same age here that she was in the Twilight books (17 going on 18) and please don't get on to me for the Creepy-Older-Man factor in her dating life (i.e. Dean is like 12 years older than her) just consider that Edward was like 100 years older than her in the books. So really I think she just has an issue with age differences. **

**P.S. just in case you are Extra Ordinarily Dull and haven't already realized, I Do Not own Twilight or Supernatural. I just own my plot line. so Don't Steal my plot line. Thanks! **

It was 10 o'clock before I stopped for gas and coffee. I paid in cash, small bills pulled from various pockets in a hair brained manner, all to convince the boy behind the counter that I really was just another hung over teenage girl on her way home after a weekend of partying and bad-decision-making.

I watched him as he sorted bills into various slots the cash register. He was pimpled, not much older than I was. Bored and tired and pissed off looking, much like I imagined any other teenager at any other convenience store job would look. I wondered what it would be like to feel that way about your job. I had never itched to be normal, never felt the pull of college and a husband and two point five blonde-haired blue-eyed children. I still didn't want that now, but with everything going on….

I grabbed my receipt out of the boy's hands and hurried out to my car, completely forgetting my cup of disgusting Kwik-E coffee. I drove off anyway, fleeing from the thoughts that I had had in that gas station.

I drove west, because that seemed like the best direction to head. I still had no idea where I was going, but that really didn't matter. Every time I stopped for gas of coffee I used a different credit card or cash, and I drove far off the beaten path to find the places I went to. It was a habit I had; throwing people off my scent, and it was a habit that would die a hard death.

A guy at the third gas station I stopped at asked me if I needed help. I didn't understand what he meant until he gestured to the front of my shirt. I gasped when I saw what he was talking about. I was wearing an old grey wrestling sweatshirt that had once belonged to Bobby. Across the middle of it were stripes of blood, Dean's blood. The blood was dry now, after hours of neglect, and the shade of brown that only blood can turn. I felt the color drain from my face and my hands begin to shake. To the man I laughed, kept my cool, told him it was woodstain, but thank you for the concern. But on the inside I was falling apart all over again. I had gone out in public covered in blood. I had gone out in public covered in Dean's blood.

I have learned over the years that it is nearly impossible to have a breakdown in your car and not get noticed. So I kept driving, all the while blinking away tears and trying to keep myself together. I knew that eventually I would run out of land to drive on. I needed a plan, plans kept me calm, helped me think, helped me survive. _99% it's pure dumb luck that you get out of a mess alive,_ I remember Phil growling at me when I was younger and he was just beginning to teach me the ropes of hunting, _the other 1% is a really damn good plan. _I needed a plan, but I couldn't think straight. All I could do was run through lists in my head of places I couldn't go and why.

Renee, my mother. She was in Florida, and I couldn't go to her because she hated me for something that she didn't quite understand, hated me because of what I'd done to Phil, her husband, nearly three years ago.

Ellen Harville was a good friend, always willing to take me in no matter the situation, but I refused to go to her or her daughter, Jo. They had enough tragedy in their lives without me bringing down a demon army on their heads.

Bobby Singer, who I had just run from, and who it would be months before I could face again.

Where ever I went I would have to be careful. Seemed like everyone wanted a piece of me these days. I was wanted for questioning by the Feds under my own name, and if they ever connected some wide spread dots I could be dealing with a lot more than just a quizzical law enforcement officer. There was a coven of vampires after me for stealing a prized possession from them a year or so back. A few hunters were waiting for my next big trip up so that they could charge in and play hero because I was there when the Devil's Gate was opened. And Lilith. Dear Lilith probably wanted to dance around a tribal fire and paint herself with baby's blood while hoisting my intestines on a pointy stick and shrieking a war cry. After all I was in the room when she was humiliated by a human. She couldn't kill Sam and so she turned tail and fled, and I watched it all, effectively signing my own death warrant.

20 miles to the coast and I was out of time, out of options. It would be getting dark soon and I had to turn my car around now unless I was planning on driving into the ocean. Tears of frustration gathered at the corners of my eyes and that only made me madder. All these decisions that I couldn't bear to make back when Dean was alive were being forced upon me now, and it was overwhelming. Suddenly wearing that bloody sweatshirt was too much, I couldn't do it anymore. All I could see was that night, the night the hell hounds ripped Dean to pieces. Over and over again it played in my head, further infecting the jagged hole where my heart had once been. _Emotion clouds judgment._ Phil had always told me, and here I was, spewing emotions like some daytime drama star. But I couldn't hold it in. Not now, not when I was alone. Not when there wasn't anyone around to hold it in for.

I needed to burn the sweatshirt, before I went crazy, I could feel it in my bones. _Dirt road. Right now. Right turn. _I didn't slow for the turn; instead I accelerated head on into the mass of leafy green that surrounded me on three sides. Behind me a cloud of dust covered the view of the main road. I followed the tire tracks to the end of the line where they stopped right in the densest of trees and underbrush. I hesitated for a second before snatching my army duffle and climbing out of the car. From where I had parked I could see a faint trail of some sort leading deeper into the woods. My gut screamed no, that it was a bad, bad, very bad idea to go down that trail, but every bone in my body tingled yes.

"I'd listen to your gut, I mean since when have creepy forest trails ever been a good thing?" I shrieked and spun on the spot, drawing my gun and preparing to fire on whomever it was that had just spoke. There was no one near me, but I could feel the lips of the voice at my ears as it whispered in an all too familiar way, "But what's life without a little risk, eh babe?" I spun again, and still no one was there.

"Dean?" My voice was shaky, because I was sure that I was losing my mind, hearing his voice in the middle of a forest, saying the things that he had said to me a thousand times before.

No one answered me, so I stood alone, a crazy girl pointing a gun at an empty forest, before making my way to the path. The grass was wet and soaked through the legs of my jeans in seconds as I trudged through the thick wildlife. Something inside me told me to keep going though, keep walking, just a few more feet… was it getting lighter ahead?

I broke the tree line and stumbled into an enormous field just as a rouge breeze blew past me, lifting my hair around my face and I raised my arms to greet it, breathing in deeply as it carried the scents of the forest to me. For a moment I felt as though I could lose myself in this place, all my worries and grief. But then I remembered why I came. I remembered that I had a job to do. I walked to the middle of the field and set down my bag, still trying to steady myself by breathing deeply.

I shucked the sweatshirt first. The bloodstain was huge, dried in, violent. I held it out in front of me; gritting my teeth against the pain it was causing the hole in my chest. Some of _his_ scent lingered on the fabric; I had embraced him so many times while wearing this garment, he had held me against him so often. I briefly buried my nose in the familiar gray sweatshirt before folding it up and laying it on the ground. I had a job to so and daylight was fading fast, I told myself sternly, but in the back of my head a small, scared part of me was begging me to _burn it, burn it fast, please, it hurts too much to remember._ I opened my bag and reached for my tin of salt, pouring a liberal amount over the sweatshirt before dousing it in lighter fluid. Another breeze swept by and I shivered: the only shirt I had left was a thin camisole. I looked down and huffed in dismay. Across my stomach was another smear of blood, bled through from the sweatshirt, no doubt. It took only a second of indecision before my mind was made and I was shedding the thin camisole as well, leaving me in the middle of a giant field in the middle of a giant forest in nothing but my bra and wet jeans. I pulled out a book of matches and folded back the cover, holding everything carefully so that I didn't get burned. I struck the whole book at once against my knee before tossing it onto my clothing.

I watched the last bits of Dean Winchester burn away with my clothing before turning my back to the flames and picking up my bag. I was two steps away from my impromptu campfire when it started to rain. _Great, just great_.

"IS THAT ALL YOU'VE GOT?" My voice broke the natural silence of the field and I felt for a moment like I had trespassed on something sacred. I held my hands to the heavens, daring lightning to strike me before continuing on to my car.

+ + + + + HELTER SKELTER + + + + +

In all of my lists and calculations of places I couldn't go and people I couldn't endanger there was one name left out, decidedly forgotten. They called him Crazy Charlie because years of hunting had left him so paranoid that he shot first, second, and third, and might just ask you a question or two before shooting again. It didn't matter whether you were some bad-news-evil-son-of-a-bitch or a paper boy, if you were where Crazy Charlie didn't want you to be, you probably weren't going to be there much longer. Enough people, actual honest-to-god innocent people, got shot full of rock salt that the government forced Charlie to twelve step his way through every program they could pay for. He was a war veteran of some sort and so they felt obligated to fully and completely finance his recovery and turn him into a regular working joe. I had met Crazy Charlie a few times before all the therapy and the government financed "rehabilitation".

Now though, now things were different. Crazy Charlie was, so they said, not so crazy any more. It had been years since we least spoke, and I was terrified that things had changed too much. Who knew, maybe he had a whole new life now, wife and kids and a dog named Fido. He might open his door, see me, and slam it in my face. Or things could've not changed at all and he could open the door and fill me full of lead.

That was why I sat in the car, starring at the house that I only dimly remembered from all those summers ago. _This is insane._ I grumbled to myself. _You've fought the stuff of nightmares and horror flicks for years, but you can't face suburbia? Can't march up to that door and say "Hey Charlie, I know it's been a while. I was in the neighborhood and wondered if I could reach on your couch for a night…or a week… or a month… or two… you know…"? _And I couldn't. I really really couldn't. I was so afraid, not of Charlie but of rejection, because this is the last idea I had, and once this one was shot down I would be living in hotels and squatting in for sale houses. For once I wanted permanence, stability. Was that too much to ask?

_Breathe in, breathe out, now go. _

I forced myself out of the car slamming my door behind me, not even trying to be silent. From the backseat I pulled out a ratty old knapsack that held my salt, holy water, favorite gun, and a jar of dead man's blood, along with other essentials. I slung an old army issue duffle over my shoulder that held a few changes of clothing. Finally I gently pulled out the old hardcover guitar case that housed what I considered my only real prized possession. She was a Yamaha FG-335 Lightwood acoustic guitar with a tone that always made me great wads of cash when I cracked open the case on a street corner.

I stood on the street for a minute, just looking over the mess I was about to enter, letting the rain soak me to the core. Finally though I got impatient. I was wet, tired, ready to get this over with. Numbly I glided up the front walk and to the door where I watched as my fist reached out and pounded on the wood. It was like watching a movie without the remote, I couldn't hit pause or stop or rewind, I just had to watch events unfold. I heard cursing and stomping ad the rattling of chains and locks, but I didn't even have the energy to brace myself for what could be the last moments of my pitiful existence. The door swung open to reveal Charlie, aiming what appeared to be an elephant gun right between my eyes.

I couldn't bring myself to care anymore. He hadn't shot me yet, so obviously all that therapy had done some good, but a hunter's self control could only go so far. I was going to get myself shot real soon, I was sure of it. I closed my eyes, letting exhaustion take over my body and flood my bones. I could feel myself start to sway, and then I heard a mumbled "Isabella?"

My eyes snapped open and out of habit I centered myself, waking up within seconds every nerve ending that had previously been asleep. "The one and only." I managed a smirk, because it's what Charlie would expect, but my words didn't have their usual biting edge.

"Well damn," Charlie reached up to scratch his head, still holding the rifle, and I flinched, half expecting the thing to go off and blow us both to kingdom come. "Renee told me you were dead, round abouts three years ago." He scowled at the thought.

Huh. That nudged at the wound in my chest where my heart used to be, making it throb dully. "Is that the story she's spreading?" My words took on the quality I had long ago adopted when talking about my mother, a flippancy designed to show that I didn't care about her obvious rejection, but my shoulders sagged with the news that my mother had pronounced me dead. I couldn't understand why I cared now, but it hurt me, this her final act of denying anything to do with me.

"Well," Charlie shuffled awkwardly "I'm glad you're not dead. It sure is good to see you again honey." He forced a gruff sort of smile, trying to take away whatever pain his words may have unintentionally caused.

I sighed and stepped through the door, over the iron symbols inlayed into the floor meant to keep out demons and whatnot. I knew that I wouldn't be getting much sleep tonight. Charlie would want an explanation, and I would tell him everything, I always did. I echoed his words, "Good to see you too Dad."

**Thanks for reading! Please review! Oh, and I know that wasn't much of a cliffy, but bear with me, we're just picking up speed!**


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: And I'm back. Ha! You all probably thought I was dead or something right? Wrong! Just at School, and therefore busier than a mofo. So here's where we pick up the story! Enjoy**

**P.S. Unless you are (still) incredibly Extra Ordinarily Dull you should know that I don't own diddly-squat except for my plotline and characters that didn't exist before I made them up (don't think there are any of those yet though…). **

I was fourteen years old when I shot my mother's husband, Phil. _Kill or be killed. That's the cardinal rule of hunting, of nature. You kill it before it kills you. This isn't a video game, kid. You don't get four more lives after you die the first time. Either you're dead or it is. _How many times had Phil drilled that single lesson into my head? At first his words had frightened me, but soon I learned a hard indifference. Because no matter how much I wanted to reject that one single statement and argue that really, nobody had to die, I knew that Phil was right and that everything I would ever face would be going in for the kill.

Phil met my mother when I was nine years old. She was going through her nursing phase, working in the city ER when he stumbled in, a stab wound to the gut that had sliced through some intestines and other important organs. She held his hand while the doctors stitched him up, babbling to him about national debt or some such nonsense because they couldn't sedate him during the operation. He lived and she never stopped chattering. One week later he was living in our small apartment, recuperating and wooing the both of us. Their meeting was the stuff of a romance novel, and before The Big Bad my mother used to tell me the story before I went to bed; each time it got more exciting, with more details.

At first everything was rainbows and puppy dog tails. Phil helped out around the house more and more the better he got. And my mother seemed happier with him around. With Phil around the bills got paid and the taxes were turned in on time. With Phil around I didn't have to balance the checkbook and make sure all our groceries were taken care of. My mother got to continue being her childlike self and I got to actually be a child. Everything was right.

Then, about a month after he moved in, Phil got called away on a business trip. He kissed my mother goodbye and ruffled my hair and then he drove away, only to return a week later, slightly bruised and bloody. My mother chose to ignore the signs, but I was a curious nine year old, convinced that when I grew up I would be a spy for a top secret government agency. So the next time Phil had a business trip I tagged along, in his backseat under a blanket. I learned that day that not everything is just a bed time story, that more often than not nightmares are real and they can follow you into the day. Phil caught me, but not before I had seen more than any grade-school aged child should ever see. After that day Phil taught me everything he knew about the supernatural, and what it took to kill it. My nine year old lips stumbled over Latin verses and my shaky hand drew symbols. I learned how to fire a gun and then he took me out on hunts with him. At first I was only aloud to sit in the car and pass rounds of ammo out through the window as he warded off whatever it was we were hunting. Then I was aloud out to dig graves and light things on fire. Sometimes he handed me the clues to a case and a laptop and had me do all the research, find all the missing puzzle pieces. Whatever it was, Phil always made sure I was prepared to face it and take it down.

But this hunt, the hunt that he took me on a few days after my fourteenth birthday, was different. We were out after some type of ancient magic and getting nowhere fast. You could tell that it was ancient by the taste left in the air, for months afterward that taste was on the tip of my tongue, haunting my every waking moment. Phil went off alone one night, ruffling my hair his way out the door and reminding me to protect myself. I stayed up for a while watching crappy motel TV and wondering exactly what made pay-per-views worth paying for before drifting off, a shotgun leaning against the nightstand and a handgun under my pillow.

It was the scratching that woke me. It was like twigs from a tree scraping on the door to the motel room, only more substantial. And there was a taste in the air, that taste that will never leave me. It took my sleep incrusted mind almost a full minute to comprehend what was going on before I was fully awake and terrified, every nerve ending in my body sparking with life. By that time though the door had broken open and he was already in the room, just feet away from me. He was a corpse really, there was skin hanging in strips from his face and the tips of his fingers had worn away to bone, quite literally. Blood pooled at bruises more violently than I had ever seen before, and one of his legs was twisted, dragging strangely behind the rest of him. It wasn't until I saw the eyes though, that I really understood what was going on. His eyes were completely white, dead but not unseeing. It was later that I learned all I could about zombies. Later that I learned how after a zombie is made the body begins to deteriorate quickly, rotting from the inside out. Later I learned that a zombie is made from a freshly killed corpse, and is only created by powerful magicians that used them for their own dark purposes. Right in that moment though, all I could think was: _he's not stopping. He's not stopping in recognition, he's coming after me. Kill or be killed. Kill or be killed. _And so I scrambled out of the shitty motel bed and I grabbed for the shot gun that leaned next to me. And as the walking corpse stumbled closer, I raised my gun, readied it, and took my shot. Bullet after bullet tore through his forehead, spraying brain matter and bits of skull and blood in every direction, until my chambers clicked empty and he crumpled to the ground. I stayed where I was for only a moment or so before crawling over to where he lay, dead and now rotting away. I choked on tears and mucus, hysterical laughing starting to make its way up my vocal chords, before roughly pulling myself together. I had fifteen minutes, maybe, before the cops arrived. So I took all of my things, left behind Phil's clothing and toiletries, and sped away in his car, a '67 Shelby Mustang he lovingly referred to as Eleanor. I drove away and left my stepfather's body lying in that shithole of a motel room for the cops to find.

Later, after hours of driving as far away as possible, I called my mother from a payphone outside of an airport. I cried hysterically, trying to explain what had happened and she begged me to turn myself in so that I could get the help I needed. In the background I could hear police officers trying to get her to hand over the phone, others ordering a trace on the call. I didn't care, because I had to make my mother understand. Understand that it wasn't my fault, and that I was sorry. But she didn't understand, and the moment she heard that I wasn't turning myself in she told me I was no longer welcome. Then my mother hung up and left me clutching the payphone like it was my last severed lifeline.

I bought five tickets to five different cities on the next available flights out from the airport desk with Phil's only legitimate credit card, and then I drove away, leaving a puzzle for the feds and a middle finger for my mother.

Seven months later I found myself in a bar, in between jobs and cheating yet another drunken biker out of his drinking money. I was living out of my car most of the time, occasionally using a credit card to get myself a motel room. I showered at local churches and gyms, bought only nonperishable items from the grocery store, and for extra spending money I hustled pool. The man I was playing against that night was particularly smelly and hairy, two things that always seemed attached to the biker persona. He was also especially stupid, allowing me to win almost three hundred bucks from him before walking away spitting fire. I finished my drink before walking out of the bar and back to my ride. It felt like a motel night, and I had a long day of driving to look forward to. I almost didn't notice the angry biker stalking after me until too late. His heavy hand landed on my shoulder and reflexively my right hand shot to the waist band of my jeans for my gun. But then I heard something completely unexpected: two other guns clicked from behind the biker, both aimed straight for his meaty head.

"Hands off the girl, Tiny." One of the armed men said, his voice low and rough in the cold night air. The biker whirled around, dragging me with him to face his new opponents. I took that opportunity to pull my handgun out and level it with the big guy's ear.

"Do as the nice man says, Tiny." I growled at him, pushing the cold metal of my gun against his ear. The hand on my shoulder was removed immediately, the man shaking in his massive boots. "Good job. Now why don't you go back inside and drink some more with your buddies," I tried to sound brave, but my voice wavered, and I was sure everyone could hear it. Silently the biker shuffled back into the bar, not daring to say a word.

I turned my gun on the two men who had just helped me out. I didn't like their look, two strange men carrying guns set off all kinds of alarm bells in my brain. "Thanks for that boys." I held my hands up slowly, not dropping my weapon but letting them know I wouldn't shoot them if they didn't shoot me. The men copied my careful movements, resetting their safety locks and stashing their guns in their waistbands. My thumb twitched toward the safety on my gun but I didn't feel like putting it back on quite yet.

"You okay there sweetheart?" It was the shorter one that spoke first, holding up his hands and taking a cautious step in my direction. Immediately I stepped back and into a halo of light cast by a streetlamp. I heard his gasp as the light hit me, illuminating my ragged appearance. "Jesus," He breathed, "Jesus, you're just a kid!"

I think I might have laughed at that, though I'm not sure. Hardly anybody called me a kid anymore when they saw me. I had a couple of tattoos, and I knew that I was tall and tough looking for my age. Living on your own did that.

The taller one spoke up then, breaking the tension in the air. "That tattoo. Where'd you get it?"

I could hear something odd in his voice, like strain. I knew immediately which tattoo he was talking about, I knew that tone he had from the dozen other times someone had asked me about that particular tattoo. I also knew that the right answer to his question could form new alliances for me, something vital in the world of hunting. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours." It was barely a whisper, but I knew the big man had heard me. He and the other one stepped into the halo of the streetlamp and pulled aside the collars of their shirts, revealing a tattoo identical to mine. A flaming star, directly over the heart.

"Nice to meet you boys. My name's Isabella." Finally I put away my gun, holding out my hand for them to shake instead.

"Isabella, I'm Dean Winchester, and this is my brother Sam,"

From then on it was history. I traveled with the boys, driving my car behind theirs, crisscrossing the country, killing the supernatural. We were family, arguing and laughing and kicking up a storm. Eventually I developed a crush on Dean, and then we started dating. Sam didn't seem to mind, not really. I don't think he had ever gotten over his girlfriend, Jessica's, death. When Dean said "I love you," it only seemed natural for me to say it back, because I did love him. Age wasn't ever really brought up between us because we both realized how little time we had to worry over such stupid things. Life was good, no great.

And then Sammy got stabbed. And died. And Dean went absolutely Bat shit crazy. I stayed at the shack with Sam's rotting body, curled up and convinced that I would lose both Sam and Dean in a matter of days and convinced that I could not live through that. Dean took off late at night, muttering crazily under his breath, drunk as a skunk, and I stayed behind to wait. I had never felt so alone, not when Renee had abandoned me, not when I was living in my car, not ever. I would die of loneliness, I was sure of it. And then, just as suddenly as Sam had died, he rose again like some sort of miracle second coming. Only I knew better than to believe in miracles. So when Dean came back from where ever it was he had been I gave him time to celebrate with his brother before pulling him aside and demanding to know what had gone down. I didn't have to pry very hard to find out what Dean did to save Sam.

It was at that moment, when Dean told me about his one year deal that I began shutting down. The days on the calendar flew by, each one a slap to the face. Until finally it was the night of all nights. The final showdown. Bobby Singer, an old friend of Sam and Dean's, gathered the clan for a war photo, claiming he wanted to document history. And then we went out to kill Lilith. And we failed. And Dean died. And a part of me died with him.

I told all of it to my dad, and he listened patiently, understanding my need to get it out. Every so often he'd frown and tug on his mustache, but mostly he stood stock still, just watching my lips move as I spun my crazy ass yarn. At the end of it he looked up, as if asking God for answers, before letting his gaze settle back on me. I could see the cogs in his brain slowly working, the words rising in his mouth in that slow way. Finally he spoke. "Well baby girl, I'm not gonna lie. You're in deep shit."

Something between a sob and a laugh erupted from me, and snot joined the tears that had been silently falling for a while now, making me one unattractive girl. "Yeah Dad," My voice broke and I swallowed some of the bile that was starting to rise before continuing. "Yeah, I've been in it from the start. But uh- I'm tired. And I haven't actually stopped moving in years. I feel like I just need to stand still for a while, just to get my bearings. And I was wondering if, if maybe…" But I couldn't finish the sentence. Something was keeping me from asking my father for a place to stay. Fear of rejection again I suppose.

Somehow Charlie understood though. The corners of his mouth twitched, in which direction I couldn't tell, and then he nodded once. "Your room's exactly the way you left it kid. And I reckon it'll stay that way for as long as you need it." He thumped me on the back then, his version of an affectionate gesture, before picking up his elephant gun and shuffling out of the kitchen. He began to climb the stairs slowly, calling out over his shoulder, "Go on, get some sleep. We'll talk when you wake up."

**AN: Soooooooo… Questions? Comments? Concerns? Ask and I may or may not feel like answering you. But it never hurts to ask, now does it? **

**Oh, and for those of you who are planning on berating me for not updating in so long, just remember that I am human as well, I do have a life, and as much as I would love to spend all my time writing for you, I've got Shit to Do. Thanks for being patient though. Much Love ~Rosie!**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: I feel like I'm spoiling you, giving you two updates in less than 24 hrs. Oh well… you deserve it for having to wait for so long. I wrote like a Mad Woman (Hatter) to get this all out and done with for you. Hope you appreciate it!**

I slept. My dreams were tangled up in each other, each just as confusing and fleeting as the last. Some made no sense at all; I was grocery shopping in Toronto and was frustrated at the quality of Canadian dead man's blood. Then I was sitting in a giant umbrella, floating down a river, accompanied by a smoking caterpillar; we passed an empty tequila bottle and I asked where we were, he laughed and blew smoke rings. Some were snippets of my life mixed together at odd places so that everyone I'd ever loved who'd left ended up talking all at the same time, each trying to tell me something important, each drowned out by the other. They all shouted to be heard, what they had to say I needed to hear, but the voices were too much until finally I sank to my knees, my hands over my ears, screaming at them all to _shut up, just shut up!_ Surprisingly they did.

A figure stepped forward, until he was out of the shadows and standing right in front of me. Gently he took my elbow and hauled me to my feet, peeling my hands away from my ears so that I would listen.

"Finally," he chuckled. "I was wondering when you'd lose your cool. It's good to see you getting back in control Bells." I wanted to grab him and never let him go, but I couldn't. I was rooted to the spot, unable to reach out and touch him. He noticed my distress. "Yeah, that's part of the downside to the dream world. No feeling. You can try to touch all you want, but you won't actually feel any of it." He smiled apologetically, shrugging slightly, such a Dean thing to do. I nodded wordlessly. Me talking right now might break the dream, shatter it in pieces, and then where would I be? "So I guess I died then huh? And you ran away." I glared at him then, because he should know by now that I don't run _'but you did run this time. You ran so far away you might never come back.' _A tiny mean little voice in the back of my skull hissed. But Dean just chuckled, "Okay, alright, so you didn't run. That's cool. Just so long as you don't forget who you are. You're Isabella freakin' Swan. You're a hunter. For people like Sammy that's something to escape. For me it's just the way things are. For you? Being a hunter just fuels everything else. You can do so much more with yourself. You can do shit I never even dreamed of. And all because hunting is a part of you. You get me Bells? Cause right now I'm not making a whole lot of sense, I know." He waited for my nod and then continued. "What I'm saying Bells, is you gotta live. No matter what. Live and don't ever stop. Break rules! Cause a revolution! Fight the evil sons of bitches whoever they are! Just live." His hand reached out to me, and I wanted nothing more than to take it. His calloused palm cupped my cheek, his fingers brushed hair away from my eyes, but I couldn't feel any of it.

"Dean-" I started to say something but as soon as his name left my lips the entire dream began to crack and flake away, like some kind of ancient painting that hadn't been taken good care of.

And then it was all gone and I was sitting bolt upright in a bed that I hadn't slept in in ages, in a house that I hadn't set foot in in years, in a town that I hadn't lived in with any sort of permanence in sixteen years. Crazy Charlie was right; my old bedroom had changed very little since I had last been here. The house had changed even less. The town? That was a mystery that I didn't care to explore now, if ever.

Blearily I turned to the old Barbie alarm clock that graced my bedside table. If the numbers were any indication it was three o'clock. AM or PM I couldn't tell. I guessed AM from the darkness of the sky and the crispness of the air. As my breathing slowed I noticed that it was freezing cold in the room, probably in the whole house. I hiked up an old quilt around my shoulders before bullying myself to the edge of the bed. The soles of my feet protested as soon as they hit the cold wood floors, but I persevered, keeping all of my muscles scrunched up and my back hunched over, as if that could ward off the cold. I hobbled to the door and from there to the stairs, the quilt dragging behind me like a fool's cape, my steps hobbled due to the frigid air.

I could see that the kitchen light was on as I stumbled down the stairs, though what my father was doing up at three in the morning I had no idea. The fluorescents in the kitchen glared into my eyes, causing me to wince and blink rapidly, but I could see enough to know that my dad was sitting at the dinner table with a mug of what was either coffee or whiskey, surrounded by papers.

"Hey dad," I croaked, my voice sounded terrible after hours of disuse, "Whatcha' up to?" I searched through obnoxiously yellow cabinets until I found the mugs and poured myself a cup of coffee so strong it bordered on being tar. I settled myself on a counter next to the stove, not quite comfortable sitting across the table from Charlie yet.

He looked up, blinking owlishly, before moving some papers around. "Nice to see you awake Bells." He took a long swig out of his mug before looking back up at me. "Damn sure thought you were gonna pull a Rip Van Winkle on me there. Didn't want to have to call you in absent on your first day." He took another long swig from the mug before turning back to his papers, as if what he had said made perfect sense.

"What?" My question came out garbled from the coffee, but I knew that he could understand me.

"You've been asleep for damn near twenty-four hours Bells," Dad chuckled, "I was gettin' worried!"

"Not that Dad, the part where I hallucinated a little bit and thought I heard you say I had a first day of something to attend. Repeat that part. Only without the first day bull shit." I waved my hand in the air, gesturing for him to continue. He just chuckled again.

"I stopped by the high school while you were asleep yesterday and signed all the paperwork. Everything's all set up; you just need to have your old school fax your transcripts and files over. Classes start at 7:30, but you'd better get there early just to make sure everything runs smoothly." He smiled at me, almost as if he expected me to just run with this insanity. I almost did for a minute. Then I remembered that I wasn't actually still dreaming.

"Are you CRAZY?" I exploded, jumping off the counter, "I mean, of course you are, but this is NUTS, even for you! Did you actually think this through though Charlie? May I remind you the last time I was ever actually enrolled in a school was when I was FOURTEEN? I barley have a MONTHS' worth of high school education and you want me to what? WALTZ right into the place and pretend that I've been a STAR FUCKING PUPIL for the last THREE YEARS?" I stood in the middle of the kitchen, panting after my little outburst, not really sure how to continue. "I mean come on Dad; my old school thinks that I'm a murderous raving lunatic. I haven't hung out with anyone my own age in years. I've got tattoos and a bad mouth. Dad, there is no good that can come of this." I looked at him pleadingly, silently begging him to understand.

He returned my gaze steadily, not glaring, but also not backing down on the school thing. "Isabella," He said, and I knew I was about to get some sort of well-reasoned argument that I couldn't back out of, "Forks here is a small town. We don't get visitors very often, especially not supposed-to-be-dead-teenage-daughters-of-police-chiefs. In order for you to blend in and not attract too much notice, you need to high school, just like every other seventeen year old girl. Now, you asked me if you could stay in my house, and I agreed, but living under my roof means following my rules. What I say goes. And I say that by 7:00 you'd better have all your papers in order and your story straight and you'd better be standing in that school office. Clear?" His gaze continued to burn holes through me until I nodded silently and reseated myself on the countertop.

"So," I sighed, "High school."

"High school." He laughed a bit at me. "I hear it's pretty bad. You ready?"

"Yeah, yeah, Yuk it up," I pretended to be sour, but truthfully the idea of going to school sounded intriguing… distracting. "I've seen Mean Girls, I know what to expect!"

Charlie just rolled his eyes and snickered. "Go pull together a transcript. I'll bet if you bring it in by hand they won't want a copy faxed over." He waved me out of the kitchen and went back to his papers, every so often circling something in red and reshuffling them.

+++++ HELTER SKELTER +++++

Back in my room I got to work. High school transcripts weren't among the numerous fake papers that I carried around, but they were also fairly easy to come by. That being said, I had to sift through hours of internet crap before I came up with a decent file example and transcript record. I was an average B student, with a couple low As and a single sorry C, who had seen her fair share of the detention room and had been suspended once for giving a student a black eye. I was, to sum it up, a troubled girl who could become a trouble maker, which was why I had been sent to my Police Chief Father, Charlie.

With all of this troubled history came troublesome paperwork of course, forms that had to be filled out in triplicate, certain documents that had to be signed, scanned, and reprinted to make them look like copies of the originals. There were writing samples, essays that had been particularly good or bad, notes from teachers and an evaluation from the guidance counselor. All of it was busy work of course, but still who wants to compile an entire high school record at four in the morning?

By the time I was done and had everything rubber-banded together in a giant manila file folder I was ready to go back to bed for another twenty-four hours. Instead I hopped into my first warm shower in about five months and mentally prepared myself for the experience I had only heard about.

Sure I'd seen the movies about high school. There were the cheerleading movies where if you didn't love football and didn't have a big blond head filled with air you were royally screwed. There were the musicals where theater was everything and all the students had mad dancing skills. There was the movie about the super Christian high school that hated sex and of course Mean Girls, where everyone of the female persuasion was missing a couple thousand brain cells and had a huge stick up their ass sideways.

Perhaps scariest to me though were the stories I sometimes caught on the nightly news about high school drama gone horribly wrong. Some kid had walked into school one day with a rifle and shot everyone he could get his hands on. One girl knifed another because she thought her boyfriend was cheating on her. Then there was the kid who was bullied for being gay and got so depressed that he offed himself in the bathroom. I quit watching the news after I heard about him.

Did I really want to spend a majority of my waking hours at a place where all that shit went down? Apparently I would whether I wanted to or not.

The water around me started to run cold and I shivered violently, hurrying to finish washing before jumping out of the shower and toweling dry. From my duffle bag I pulled out my only other pair of jeans besides the ones I had worn last night, a black cami, and a worn out green checked flannel button down. I had to rummage around for a minute or two before I found an almost fresh set of underwear, but another few seconds told me that the search for socks would be fruitless and I was running late. I huffed in frustration before throwing on my clothes and yesterday's socks, lacing up my boots. I really needed to do some laundry. Looking in the mirror I decided what would really finish off the grungy invisible-yet-still-slightly-there high schooler look I was going for was some eyeliner and a bit of mascara, just enough to outline my eyes, not enough to remind me of the chicks that hung out in biker bars trying to pick up love and inadvertently picking up STDs.

"BELLA," Charlie's voice cut through the air, reminding me to get my ass in gear.

"Coming!" I called back, leaving the bathroom an absolute disaster zone in my rush to grab everything I needed for school. Tattered, half used up note books, a few spare folders and several Bic pens were thrown haphazardly into my old backpack, and I chucked out everything else that might be considered dangerous: knives, guns, and ammo; or disgusting: a jar of dead man's blood and a couple hex bags. I scooped up my newly made school records on my way out the door, pausing just long enough to kiss Charlie on the forehead and promise to get him back for making me do this. Then I was off.

**AN: So this one's a bit shorter than the last… but I did write it in a day, so Don't Complain. Or Better Yet, REVIEW! and tell me how you Really Feel. Questions? Comments? Concerns? I can't promise I'll reply but I can promise I'll read! Update coming soon so long as I stay in my Mad Writing Mood! LOVE ~Rosie!**


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Chapter Five! Enjoy! (Still don't own anything By The Way.)**

Backpack? Check.

Pencils, Pens, Notebooks, Folders? Check, check, check, check.

Wallet for lunch money? Check.

Gigantic fake school transcript? Check.

Gun in the glove box? Check.

Knife in right boot? Check.

Bottle of Holy Water? Check.

Sense of Foreboding? Holy Mother fuckingcheck.

Go Gettem' Attitude and Positive spirit? Well, can't have everything, now can we?

My hands, which in the scariest of circumstances were steady and sure, shook as I double and triple checked over everything I needed.

I sat in my car, facing the weirdest looking admissions building I had ever seen. Granted I hadn't seen a whole lot of admissions buildings in my lifetime. The school in front of me looked less like a school and more like a cluster of squat, ugly, single story brick bunkers, perhaps built as above ground nuclear fallout shelters? I had no idea what an actual high school was supposed to look like, I had never really paid attention when we passed them driving though towns, but I was almost sure that this was not what academia looked like. Oh well. Either way I needed to get this done. Step one of moving on after a supernatural bad guy offs your boyfriend, for me at least, was going to school.

I slung my backpack over my shoulder and stepped out of the car, locking it behind me and pocketing the keys. It was just a few short steps from my car to a set of double glass doors, and through them was a large secretarial station. A lumpy looking lady with the strangest color orange hair I had ever seen was settled behind the desk, fiddling around on the computer and chewing on a spoon. She did not look up when I stopped in front of her.

"Umm excuse me." I gave and awkward wave, jolting the woman out of her reverie. "I'm Isabella Swan? My father Charlie Swan should've enrolled me yesterday?" I tried to smile winningly, though I know that it turned into more of a grimace.

The secretary's eyes widened as I said my name. For a moment she just sat there, spoon still in mouth, hand still idly moving the computer mouse about. Then she snapped right to business, as if realizing what valuable solitaire time she'd been wasting. "You're the Chief's daughter!" She exclaimed, her voice breathy, "oh yes dear! You've made our lives quite a bit busier the last couple days!" She let out a girlish giggle before continuing, "Now, we didn't have the files from your old school, so we couldn't make you a schedule, but your father said you'd bring those with you. You got them? Good!" She didn't even wait for me to get a word in edgewise, she just kept talking. I hated this place already. "So just go on down that hall way to the councilor's office, and I'm sure that he'll be happy to make you up a schedule to fit your needs. Okay? Bye-bye now!" And without being able to say another word I was sent on my way down a narrow hall to a small closet like space that looked like it might have, at one point in time, served as a mechanical closet.

I knocked on the open door and a balding man with a slight pudge of a belly waved me in. "You're Isabella?" I nodded, wondering just who else I might have been. "Ahh good. Have a seat and I'll look over your files."

I sat in the chair next to his desk, cringing slightly at a strange looking stain on the blue woven cloth. From my backpack I produced the file folder with my school history, and he took it eagerly with a small toothed grin.

I tried not to fidget too much as he leafed through the papers, mumbling to himself and frowning ever so slightly. He came to the forms filled out over the supposed suspension and he sucked in a big breath, making him look like some sort of fish. Finally when he was done reading all about my made up sordid past he scooted himself over to the computer and began to type furiously, faster than I could've believed possible for a man with such sausage fingers. He clicked his mouse once, twice, three times, and the printer began to whirr, slowly regurgitating my class schedule. Then he turned to me, his face a mask of seriousness.

"Isabella." He started, "I don't think I need to tell you this but I will anyway. Solving matters with your fists might have worked out alright for you at your old school, but here it simply will not fly. I'm sure you already know this though, right?" He raised his eyebrows at me waiting to hear my heartfelt confession.

"I've been informed that socking people is highly frowned upon in polite society." Was all I could think to say.

The guidance counselor blinked at me for a minute or so, not quite sure what to make of that statement before sighing and continuing. "Yes, well… You've also got collage to think about now, which is why I'd like to see an improvement in your grades. You seem to be a fairly bright individual—" _Buddy you just met me, _I thought sourly,_ You have no idea who I am. _"—but your grades simply don't reflect this. I would like to see that change. I believe in you Isabella. But do you?" He watched me steadily. It unnerved me. I was also sure that most of his speech was straight out of the guidance counselor's handbook.

Unfortunatly I knew what I'd have to do to get him to quit watching me. "I know I can do better. And I'm learning to believe in myself. I have a good feeling about this place, and about this school. I'm so excited to start my classes. What's my schedule like?" I could see that just with those words I had silenced him. There was simply nothing else to do but hand me my schedule and a slip that I had to get signed by all of my teachers. Inside my head I did a fist pump. On the outside I was a teenager who had lost her way for a while and was now trying to find her way back.

On my way out of the office the secretary, who I learned was Mrs. Cope, waved and wished me a fantastic day. I nearly laughed, but instead just thanked her for her help.

My watch told me that I had already missed my fist period class, some type of English elective called Psych Lit. or something. It was my understanding that we would be reading about crazy people. Oh joy.

I headed off to my second period in building five room seven: Government. As soon as I entered the room heads shot up; it was like I was a massive dosage of caffeine to these exhausted high schoolers. The teacher, Mrs. Applebee, seemed kind of annoyed that I had interrupted her lecture on electoral voting and how and when and why that came about. The students all looked thrilled that I had interrupted. She signed the slip the pudgy guidance counselor had given me in a huff and directed me to the back of the classroom to an empty desk behind a meaty looking football player and between a stoner passed out on his desk and a blond girl who was texting. It truly was exactly like the movies.

It was also possibly the most boring thing I had ever been forced to sit through in my entire life. Ever. By the end of the class I was almost in tears and I understood why the dropout rate was so high.

I was making my way to the door when I heard my name being called.

"Isabella! Hey, Isabella!" A lanky looking guy with acne enough for the entire high school population and black, slicked back hair came jogging up to me, puffing slightly with the exertion of running across a class room.

"Um hello?" It was a question because I had absolutely no idea who the hell this kid was or why he was talking to me. Well, I did have an inkling of why, but I'd rather not know for sure. Maybe he had turrets. Maybe he needed to tell me I looked exactly like some moody actress from Hollywood or something. Or that I had toilet paper stuck to my shoe. Or that I had a blood stain on my pants. _No. Don't Go there. Just don't. Because we would like to get through one entire day without some sort of emotional meltdown. So just think about rainbows and unicorns and butterflies and killing shit. Just not the blood. _

Geekerton didn't seem deterred by my obvious standoffishness or by my momentary lapse in sanity. Instead he just laughed. "I'm Eric, the eyes and ears of this place. Anything you find yourself needing, wanting? I'm your guy!" He through what I could only guess was an attempt at a sly smile my way. I felt like my eyebrows were about to disappear into my hairline. This could not be happening. I started to move towards the door again, hoping that if I backed away slowly maybe he would just leave me alone. Instead he followed after me. And slung his arm over my shoulder. Immediately alarm bells started clanging in my head.

_Danger Will Robinson! Big Fucking Danger! Invasion of Personal Space! Set phasers to Kill! Like prontonomo!_

I was almost sure that I was going to end up killing the kid whose name was Eric and whose arm was currently slung around my shoulder. There was a knife in my boot, but I didn't even need to use it. With the right move I could crack this kid's head like an egg against the concrete. He wouldn't stand a chance. Poor sucker. At the moment I wasn't thinking rationally. This was pure animalistic instinct taking over my brain, telling me to neutralize the threat and then get the fuck out of Dodge. I was about to do it to. But suddenly something happened. The oddest feeling came over me, a feeling of inner peace, calmness. I was no longer freaking out about Eric the Geek's arm being slung around my shoulders. I still didn't like the feeling, I still wanted that arm off of me, but now the immediate survival instinct was gone, and I was left knowing that I would've killed that kid had that strange calm fog not intervened. That terrified me, but I would deal with it later. Right now I had to get the arm off of me.

"Thanks for the offer Eric, but I've really got to get to class, I don't want to be late twice in one day," I smiled at him and shrugged out from under his arm, immediately feeling relief. The calm fog slowly retreated from my body as though assessing if I was really alright or not before completely leaving me. I checked my schedule: Spanish, Building three room one, before giving him a slight wave and hurrying off, leaving him on the sidewalk alone, mouth slightly ajar, completely speechless.

+++++HELTER SKELTER+++++

Surprisingly Spanish wasn't all that bad. Having lived in Arizona for all of my childhood, with the exception of being born in Forks, I was pretty fluent in conversational Spanish. I spoke faster than all of the other kids in my class, and with a slight Mexican accent as opposed to in the formal Spanish dialect they taught in schools, but nonetheless Senora Herder seemed impressed.

She stood at the front of the class, lecturing about questions and phrasing, but my mind was stuck in the past. Sam had taken freshman Spanish as one of his prelaw requirements at Stanford, but I think the only reason he passed the class at all was because he met Jessica half way through the first semester and she was a fluent speaker. Once he had tried to question a maid at some no-tell motel in El Paso, Texas about some werewolf killings. The poor boy hadn't gotten five words out of his mouth before the maid was rolling her eyes and asking the saints why white men were built so stupid. That's when I had stepped in to reply, in my charming Spanish, that it wasn't white men that were the problem, just men in general. We learned everything we needed to know.

My memories were interrupted by a sharp "Psst!" from the girl who sat at the table next to mine. I looked over to find her staring right at me, eyes huge and mouth slightly open. When she saw me looking she waved enthusiastically. "Hi!" she whispered, though I could hardly call it quiet, "I'm Jessica. You're Bella right?" The English sounded strange to me after nearly an hour of listening to and speaking nothing but Spanish.

"Yeah, that's me," I smiled back, wondering if I was about to make my first ever high school friend.

"OhmyGod you like HAVE to sit with me and my friends at lunch! What class do you have next?" She squealed, apparently taking the fact that I had responded to her at all as proof that we were meant to be great friends.

"Trig. With Mr.—"

"Mr. Varner! Me too! OhmyGod! I can't believe this! It's like instant sisterhood!" She grinned crazily at me and bounced up and down in her seat in excitement. Then her expression suddenly turned serious, "Mr. Varner is like, an absolute a-hole, but if you keep your head down and know math pretty well you should be fine. If you don't though you're like totally screwed, and I am sooo sorry. That man is like Satan's older brother or something, I swear." She looked deadly serious for about five seconds before returning to her peppy chatter. I was still on edge over the Satan's older brother comment though.

Jessica provided easy conversation through the end of Spanish and all the way to building four room one where Satan's older brother apparently taught Trigonometry. She wasn't completely stupid as far as I could tell, and a couple of times she even made me laugh with her description of Forks and its tiny population. But as soon as we reached the door to Mr. Varner's room she shut up, turning towards me quickly to mouth _I'll pray for you,_ before hurrying on to her seat. Not a good sign.

I stepped into the room and up to the teacher's desk, where a man with thinning dark curls and glasses as thick as the bottoms of glass coke bottles greeted me, signed my slip, and then forced me to stand in front of the entire class and introduce myself.

"Hello my name is Isabella Swan and I'm new," I muttered as quickly as possible before attempting to dart into an empty seat next to Jessica in the third row. But a hand grabbed the sleeve of my shirt holding me hostage at the front of the classroom.

_Don't kill him, Don't kill him, Don't kill him, Don't kill him. _"Come now, Miss Swan, I'm sure you can do better than that!" _Don't kill him, Don't kill him, Don't kill him. _

I smiled at the class and tugged my sleeve out of Varner's grasp. "My name is Bella. My favorite color is orange, my favorite subject is naptime, and I prefer college football to NFL" With that I headed towards the seat next to Jessica.

Surprisingly enough, Jess didn't chatter incessantly throughout the lesson, but sat up straight and paid attention to what Varner was teaching. It was weird, though I couldn't really judge seeing as I had only met the girl last period. So instead of being distracted by idle talk I had to actually try to pay attention to what was going on in class.

None of it made any sense at all. Varner stood at the bored drawing things out and scrawling out notes for everything he did, clarifying things over and over again for the idiots in the class. I wrote down everything he did, and some things he didn't, but by the end of the hour my brain was tied in knots and I had several pages of a notebook filled up with what looked like nonsense. I guess I missed a lot in those three years' worth of math classes I didn't attend.

At the end of the hour Jess and I walked towards the cafeteria, her providing most of the conversation an me adding in a sarcastic or witty comment wherever I felt the need.

"So, sorry about Varner. You seemed to hold up pretty well though, considering…" Jess at least had the decency to look apologetic about not warning me that Varner would want me to introduce myself. I just laughed though.

"Oh, so it could've been worse then? What, did he have a kid who peed himself up there or something?" Jess giggled. "Seriously though Jess! You go on and on about him being Satan's brother and I expect some guy with horns and fangs and instead I get that? He looks like… I dunno a Jewish accountant!" We both laughed as we made the last turn to the cafeteria building. "And then, I walk into the room expecting to spend another fun filled hour relaxing and learning more about this fair and bustling metropolis from you, only to find out that you're Varner's star pupil!" She really laughed then and we paused right before the cafeteria doors.

"I dunno Bella, math is just my thing! English, eh, who needs it you know? I already know my grammar and spelling. And Spanish? Although I admit it would be cool to speak another language, I just don't have the skills to master it! Science grosses me out beyond belief… Math though, math I understand. Everything has a rule and all the numbers will always be the way they are. It's like a giant puzzle. And there's always more to learn. But the Mr. Varner thing? Just because I'm his favorite doesn't mean I don't recognize that the guy's devil spawn!" She giggled.

"Well I'm glad you understand everything he just taught, because all of it went right over my head. I can help you with Spanish though. I'm pretty fluent." I added in the last part, hoping that she'd say something about helping me out with math. She did, and we made tentative plans to meet up on Thursday night for studying.

With all that out of the way we entered the feeding grounds.

Like everything else in high school, the cafeteria was loud, messy, and surpassed every one of my wildest daydreams. Teenagers perched themselves on every flat surface available: chairs, tables, window sills, railings, some were on the platform like stage that ran along one wall. A football whizzed across the room, nearly decking a kid in a beanie before beaning another guy in the nads. In the corner of the giant room a small table of adults huddled fearfully. In their classrooms they might rule with an iron fist, but in the cafeteria they were fair game for whoever got to them first, and they themselves understood this better than anyone.

And then amongst the chaos I saw them, sitting up straight in their chairs, food untouched in front of them, eyes all angled towards their own table, and air of polite disinterest about them. There were five, three boys and two girls, each undeniably beautiful, each perfectly pampered. They were rich, there was no doubt about that, and stuck up too probably. It was like the entire surrounding cafeteria was a giant episode of Food Fight and they were in their own private Gossip Girl bubble.

I followed Jess to a crowded table by the stage, obviously where the popular kids sat to eat, but kept my eyes on the table full of Barbie dolls. As soon as we reached our destination seats were kicked out for us and room was made. All of the sudden I was being introduced to people, giving awkward nods and waves and trying desperately to remember names for later. There was Mike, Tyler, Eric the Geek from earlier, Sarah, Lauren, Angela, Danny, Preston… the names went on and on until everyone became one giant blur. I was still trying to match names to faces when Jess poked me.

"Hey, what do you want to eat?" I stared at her for a moment before finally comprehending.

"oh it's okay, I can go up and get it myself—"

"No, no, Mike's going up for like fourths anyways, just tell him what you want and he'll pick it up for you! He's already grabbing like half the table stuff, he might as well get you as well!" She smiled and gestured to a sweet looking blond boy who reminded me of a dog, golden retriever maybe.

"I'll just take an apple and a can of coke, Mike!" With that he ran off towards the food line, a place that, now that I looked closer, I never ever wanted to go near.

Within moments our food was back and I was chomping down on a green apple while Jessica tried to explain the different groups in the cafeteria. "So there are the Jocks, all they do is athletics all day every day. Then over in that corner are the stoners. They come to school wasted, even out midway through the day, take a hit during lunch and then they're wasted for the rest of the day…" She went through pretty much everybody in the Caf, stereotypig them until I could easily remember who it would be okay to be caught alone in a dark alley at night with and who I would want the police on speed dial for. Then her gaze stopped at them, and I found myself staring too. "Those," She breathed, "Are the Cullens. Uber rich, uber stuck up, and all of them together, like together together." Her tone held all the markers of small town scorn, but I sensed that there was more to this story.

"So they're all a family?" It was creepy, to say the least, though whether it was the sibling banging sibling creepiness I was picking up on or something entirely more sinister was hard to say. For now I remained on alert.

"Oh yeah, adopted siblings, but still. Legally they've all got the same two last names and they all live in one giant house on the edge of town somewhere with Dr. Cullen and his wife. Emmet, Rosalie, Jasper, Alice, and Edward." She sighed, as though she were wishing she were part of that exclusive family.

"So who's banging who?"

"Probably the whole family," she said meanly, but then she amended her statement. "But officially Emmet, the big one, and Rosalie, the blond are together. Then Jasper, the one who looks like he's about to go Full Metal Jacket on the entire student body, is with Alice, the tiny girl. Edward's on his own, but good luck barking up that tree. Apparently nobody here is good enough for him." She sounded bitter by the end of her speech, so I decided to lighten the mood.

"Am I detecting some sour grapes there Jess?" I wiggled my eyebrows around playfully and she giggled, albeit reluctantly.

"Oh yeah, just about as sour as they come, though it'll be kind of tough to find a girl at this school who hasn't at least lusted over Edward Cullen. Most of us here have been rejected in one form or fashion." She laughed bitterly, so I decided to up the ante.

"And besides, how do you know that I was lusting after Edward? I could've totally been checking out his sister, you know, the blonde bombshell built like a brick shit house!" This time Jessica's eyes went wide as dinner plates and her mouth dropped open in shock. Then she laughed out loud, long and hard.

"Bella," She managed to get out between gasps, "We are going to get along fabulously!"

**AN: So there it is. It's really long, but we got the first half of the first day of school out of the way! Bella nearly killed a couple people (what's life without a few emotional breakdowns?) and even made a couple new friends! (I was just so tired of those Everybody Hates Jessica fanfics. I mean come on! Grow up!) **

**So tell me what you think! I might not respond, but I will read! Love~ Rosie**


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